Keepin' It Real - Hardcover

Powell, Kevin

3.78

18 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345404009 ISBN 13: 9780345404008

Publisher: One World/Ballantine, 1997

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"Throughout the ghettoes of America we of the hiphop generation say 'keep it real' as a way of insisting that the truth is the only way to go. In short, there is no time for sidestepping reality."
--From the Introduction

In Keepin' It Real, writer, poet, and cultural critic Kevin Powell puts both himself and society under a microscope and creates a searingly honest collection that is both powerful and disturbing. Powell's letters and reflections take us on the dizzying tight-rope walk between two worlds. From the poverty and misery of his New Jersey childhood to the excesses and successes of his mercurial rise to prominence, it is a life lived on the cutting-edge.

Within this rich weave of musings, confession, and sometimes painful introspection, Powell confronts such issues as racism, black self-hatred, gender violence in the 90s, and his own anguished revelations about sex, love, and misogyny. He also explores the meaning and myths of the Million Man March and the influential and threatening presence of rap music.

Like that musical movement created by his contemporaries, Kevin Powell samples the sights and sounds and scenarios of American life, then reshapes them into a provocative soundtrack for our times.

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From the Publisher:

If you spend a great deal of time searching for the perfect words to say to the father that never was--check out Letter to My Father in Kevin Powell's Keepin' It Real. This letter is sure to make any father think twice before walking away.

From the Back Cover:

"Here is a book to read and a writer to watch. Obviously Kevin Powell has the talent to see and the courage to say. He truly keeps it real."
--Maya Angelou

"POWELL TELLS IT LIKE IT IS WITHOUT AIRS OR EGO. . . . More than just a cry from the 'hood . . . Keepin' It Real successfully tags the sentiments and shortcomings of a nuevo post-teen culture."
--The Washington Post Book World

"CANDID . . . [A] TIDAL WAVE OF EMOTIONS . . . Similar to the works of other African-American male authors who preceded him, from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Richard Wright's Black Boy to Malcolm X's autobiography and Nathan McCall's Makes Me Wanna Holler."
--San Diego Union Tribune

"Kevin Powell's Keepin' It Real is a mighty wind of fresh air. His pitiless self-examination--and his equally honest exploration of the racial, sexual, cultural, and class faultlines that thread our psychic and social landscape--is not only brave but necessary if our nation is to survive. In these timely and insightful letters, one of America's most brilliant young cultural critics never stops inviting us to think sharply about who we are and what we are doing--especially to the most vulnerable among us, black youth. In Keepin' It Real Powell has removed all doubts about what that letter stands for that defines his generation: Xcellent!"
--Michael Eric Dyson
Visiting Distinguished Professor of
African American Studies
Columbia University
Author of Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line

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